This invention relates generally to cash (bills and coins) discriminating and accepting devices and more particularly to a device for validating and accumulating cash inserted thereinto in which a bill conveying belt and a coin conveying belt are provided separately, and the genuine/counterfeit character of each bill and coin thus inserted is discriminated, genuine cash being accumulated within the device.
Various automatic cash-operated machines such as automatic vending machines, change dispensing machines, game machines, and record-playing machines (hereinafter referred to as vending machines and the like) each of which, in the same machine, accepts both paper money or bills and coins are widely used. In a vending machine of this character, in the part thereof for introducing bills and coins into the machine interior, a bill conveying belt and a coin conveying belt are parallelly provided. These belts are generally driven by an electric motor by way of a common driving shaft. In a machine of this character, each bill is clamped against the bill conveying belt by guide rollers or pressing rollers at intermediate positions and is sent inward through a bill passage. During this operation, necessary discriminating inspection is carried for each bill by a magnetic head, and genuine bills are ultimately sent into a collecting box within the housing of the cash discriminating and accepting device within the machine to be accumulated in stacked state.
In the known bill discriminating and receiving device described above, counterfeit bills are occasionally used. In such a case, the counterfeit nature of the bill is detected, and thereafter the bill conveying belt is driven in reverse direction thereby to return the bill to the insertion opening. At this time there has been a problem in that the head pressing roller becomes an obstruction and, at its place, causes the bill being returned to become jammed. Another problem is that when the bill conveying belt is reversed during the returning of a counterfeit bill, the coin conveying belt also moves in unison in the reverse direction, whereby coins are returned.